I have a confession to make: I have seen very few horror movies. Part of the reason is because when I was a small child, I was easily scared, so I avoided them as much as possible. Now that I'm older, I can watch them just fine, and I can appreciate the adrenaline rush they provide. Over the past few years, I've been doing my best to watch more new horror films. I've seen some great once, like It Comes At Night and Get Out, and I've seen some terrible ones, like The Bye Bye Man and The Lazarus Effect. However, through all the horror movies that I saw, no movie has been able to effectively scare me. I've felt the tensity, sure, but not one had legitimately freaked me out. Hereditary was the first horror movie that I saw that did just that. I found this film to not only be quite scary, but very good as well.
Hereditary follows a family consisting of Toni Collete as Annie, Gabriel Byrne and Steve, Alex Wolff as Peter, and Milly Shapiro as Charlie. At the beginning of the movie, Annie's mother dies, and as the film goes along, we see how the family reacts in the face of grief. That is all I'm going to say about the story, because it is best going into this film knowing as little as possible.
The story is great. It's dark, depressing, haunting, and, at times, hard to watch or process. The pacing is very good, and all the scenes have a natural progression to them. It does take a while for things to get really intense, but the buildup contains a lot of and strong character analysis and writing. This movie is an uncomfortable look at grief, and I mean that in the best way possible.
Speaking of character analysis, each character was fascinating to watch. They each had such distinctive personalities, and their relationships with each other were captivating to watch, if at times difficult to comprehend due to how intense some of their interactions were. Their characteristics were brought to life through the actors' performances, and they were fantastic all around. I'm sure you all have heard how amazing Toni Collette is in this movie, and I must say, you've heard right. She teeters through so many emotions throughout the run of the film, and she knows exactly when to explode through her emotions. Gabriel Byrne did great as the stern yet caring caring husband, and Milly Shapiro was phenomenal in her big picture acting debut.
The only actor to slightly underwhelm me was Alex Wolff. Don't get me wrong, for the most part, he did great. However, there was something off about his performance when he was acting sad. He was able to nail being afraid, and those moments were when his acting abilities were at their best, but I feel like he was trying to force himself into being sad in certain scenes. For example, there were moments when he had to cry, but his crying looked and sounded fake. I didn't believe him when he was being emotionally distraught, but for the rest of the movie, he did pretty great.
As for the technicalities, this film is amazing. The cinematography is incredible all around. Everything is framed beautifully, and the moments where the camera slowly creeps through the scenery are very effective. The shot composition matches perfectly with the impeccable scenic design. The house that most of this film takes place in is gorgeous, and all the extra detail that's put into the interior really brought the location to life. The lighting is amazing, the score is haunting yet beautiful, and the editing is superb. However, the best technical aspect in my opinion was the sound design. The way that audio is used in this movie adds a lot of atmosphere to the world. The sounds that are meant to be scary are scary without being overbearing our out of place, and the sounds that help bring the world to life do so expertly. I think Hereditary's sound design is going largely overlooked, and I think this movie should be recognized for how phenomenally the audio is executed.
Like I said at the beginning of this review, I found this movie to be quite scary. But why? What made this scarier than any other horror movie I've seen up to this point? For me, I found this movie scary because of how psychological it was. Some of the stuff that happened in this film messed with my head, and it wasn't because of jump scares. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of jump scares. For the most part, they all come down to something popping up at the screen and a loud jolt of music. That's it. And more than half of the time, what pops up is not scary at all. The jump scares in this movie, while there are only a few, are effective because of how subtle they are. They occur in ways that took me off guard and didn't give me time to recover from the startle afterwards. Most of the jump scares I've seen do the scare and then move on, stopping the fear the movie instills as a result. Hereditary was able to keep the fear going throughout, and it never eased up on the tension at all. It was nerve-wracking, to say the least.
As for the other horrors of the movie, they work because of the extremes they partake in. And by that, I mean the scares are either subtle and easy to miss or in your face and blatantly obvious. The movie manages to pull both types of scares off amazingly. For the former, there are some scenes where characters are going about their business in a shot that lingers for a solid two minutes. During that time, you'd think that something well happen, when all of a sudden, you see something horrifying in the background watching them this whole time. When I noticed those moments, I lost my breath. They were so effective. As for the ladder, the horrors that are shown to the obvious in their fullest extent are shown in every possible graphic detail possible. Some of the imagery produced in this movie is freaky, and it was chilling to watch. And those moments of horror are heightened by the acting, the atmosphere, the editing, the sound, and pretty much all of the other technical aspects of this movie.
As for nitpicks, there were a couple moments that felt a little cheesy, mainly towards the end. I'm not going to spoil what exactly, but there was an element to the execution of the visuals of the ending that felt a tad silly. Speaking of visuals, I found the CGI to be somewhat mediocre. There were very little instances of special effects, but when they were there, they were not that great. They took me out of the movie for a little bit once they occurred. My final nitpick has to do with the ending of the film. However, I don't want to say what it is here, because I do not want to spoil it. Now, let me say that I like the way the film ended. It had some of the scariest moments of the film, and the way that the story bits came together was thrilling. However, there is one element of how the movie ended that I wish was done slightly different. The only thing that I will say is that I wish the line between psychological and paranormal was blurred more. That's all I have to say.
Hereditary was a movie that caught me off guard in the best way possible. I know my horror movie knowledge is pretty limited, I must say that Hereditary was the first one to truly get under my skin. On top of that, this is a great film. It's a great story with great acting, characters, pacing, atmosphere, cinematography, editing, audio, sets, and scares. If you love horror movies, then I think you'll really like this one. If you don't, I don't think this one will be the one to sway you. For me, I really liked Hereditary, and I can't wait to see it again.
Final score: 8/10 (Great)
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